Back in the day, about 10 years ago, there was a big to-do about “pizza discrimination”. The Black Student Union of the university nearby had some kind of campaign against it, claiming that only one joint would actually deliver in the 'hood.
It was a Southern town so the 'hood is pretty tame by Northern standards. But I remember reading letters to the editor complaining that the writer had to call every joint in town before they would finally deliver (Hungry Howie’s i think?)
Yet the pet cause of pizza discrimination seems to have been passed over, I haven’t heard about it.
So what’s the deal with “Pizza Discrimination”? Does it still exist, if so, why no protests? What was the reason–was it only crime, or low tips?
When I worked in a Pizza Hut call center (we handled orders for 40 area delivery locations) there were a few areas that were classed as undeliverable even though they fell within the delivery area of a location. I was told that those couple of areas were removed from the service area due to multiple crimes commited against drivers in those areas. (robberies, being shot at and the like)
That’s not including individual addresses that were blacked out for various reasons, typically bounced checks, being abusive to the call center staff or drivers and things of that nature.
Way back when I worked for the Hut, there was one neighborhood we would not deliver to, but it’s difficult to say if it was based on racism. We were one of 4 stores, all owned by the same franchisee, that delivered to a small southern city and the surrounding county. My store’s area was suburban to rural and mostly white.
The off-limits neighborhood was about 10 blocks of houses and mostly populated by black people. Early in my store’s history, before I worked there, a driver was beaten severely (required a plate in his head) in a robbery that occurred at a house in that neighborhood. The perpetrators did not live in the house, the real owners were out of town at the time. We stopped delivering there. This was the only robbery or injury ever visited upon a driver in a 10+ year period. We did, however, deliver to about half a dozen majority black neighborhoods and apartment complexes, including one collection of shacks and trailers that was downright creepy, regardless of who lived there.
My gut feeling is that the store was engaged in some kind of ass-covering because of the injury to the employee. They never blacklisted an address for bad checks, abuse, or general shenanigans, of which we had plenty, from people of all ethnic and economic backgrounds. It seems to me that if there was racism in play, we would have preferentially dropped black “problem customers” while keeping white ones. But, I’m not really sure how racism works in a small business context.
Exactly - I had a friend who lived in a “blackout” zone for the precise reasons mentioned. People would call up for a delivery to an address (which they were not residents of), wait for the driver to show up, and then rob and/or assault him. This happened more than once, and they stopped all pizza deliveries within the area (which was, yes, mostly black and economically depressed).
Yeah, I think the lack of outrage over this comes from the fact that everyone pretty much understands why some pizza places won’t deliver to certain areas, and people sympathize with the low-paid driver who can’t be expected to put himself in danger for a pizza.
…not to mention what it could do to pizza prices if the driver (or his surviving family) successfully sues the employer for sending him into a dangerous situation.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with discrimination per se. A discriminating person won’t, for example, park his car on crack alley late at night and leave it for any period of time.
You’d think if you lived in crack alley and had money for a car you’d spend it on rent in a better neighborhood. One where they didn’t actually name the street “Crack Alley.”
